On Wed, 2 Jan 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Hello everyone, and all the best for a happy New Year to you all! > > I'd like to solicit a few opinions about the use of cautionary > accidentals. Published scores that I own seem to vary wildly between > the extremes of putting in as many cautionary naturals as they can (up > to and including notating an F natural if the F was sharped two bars > before) and assuming that players will need no reminder that a bar > line cancels all previous accidentals. > > With so many contradictory examples of How It's Done, I'm never sure > what to do myself when typesetting scores. My personal preference is > for keeping the cautionary naturals to an absolute minimum, but it > would be interesting to know what other people prefer. What do you > prefer to play from -- lots of cautionary signs, or the opposite? Or > -- unlikely from the examples I've looked at, but possible, I suppose > -- is there actually a hard-and-fast rule for putting the things in? > You are completely right, this is a big mess because it is handled differently in most editions. In most commercial notes I own, I would be happy if the accidentals were cautionary: I find normal naturals dissolving an accidental occurring on the previous page. I found that it is a pleasure to play from reproductions of old typesets: the sharps were clearly distinguishable from naturals while in modern notation there are not, the continuo ciphers are large and readily readable. In typesets before 1650 the rules were clear: the accidental was for the note only and any directly following note of the same pitch. The rules shifted afterwards to the modern notation, but even Bach often repeated an accidental in the same bar. I discussed the matter with Werner as we typeset the art of fugue and we used the following rules for the practical edition: 1) Stick to the rules of modern notation, do not repeat an accidental in the same bar, do not dissolve it in following bars. 2) Repeat the accidental if it occurs in another voice in the same system (or a different octava); however, dissolve an accidental in another voice in the same system. 3) Do not dissolve an accidental occurring in another system, unless it is a surprising ``Querstand''. 4) Break the above rules using CAUTIONARY or editorial (not ordinary) accidentials in cases where the context may favor the wrong choice.
I stuck to these rules also when typesetting vocal music and it serves my needs best. In the commercial editions, I cross out or whiten unnecessary accidentals because they are a source of error. When conducting or playing an organ with 3 or 4 manuals, the notes are far away and I mistake then often unnecessary naturals for sharps. Christof _______________________________________________ TeX-music mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sunsite.dk/mailman/listinfo/tex-music
